by Justin Bariso
Done right, meetings are a great way of leveraging teams to get work done faster and better. Here’s three ways to help you make sure that happens.
So, you’re sitting at your desk, trying to get some work done. Suddenly, a meeting invite pops up on your screen saying something like this:
If you haven’t guessed already, this meeting is likely to be a big waste of time. But don’t put all the blame on the poor clueless project manager. Chances are, he or she’s just doing what they’ve seen done over and over again, or maybe were even trained to do.
Or, let’s be honest: You may be the one sending out meeting invites like this.
I used to. But several years ago, I worked on a project for a global nonprofit that changed the way I looked at meetings. We interviewed a number of highly effective managers and meeting facilitators to learn more about how they used meetings to get work done.
The task was simple: Find a way to make meetings more effective and efficient.
In doing so, a few simple rules became clear for making the most of our meetings. A big one was this:
Every meeting should have:
- An agenda (sent at least 24 hours before)
- A person assigned to follow up on each task
- A summary and notes
I’m not the only one who feels strongly about this. In an article for MIT Sloan Management Review, organizational science and psychology professors Steven Rogelberg, Cliff Scott, and John Kello recommend that organizers send out an agenda along with relevant background material ahead of the meeting, with enough time for participants to review.
At Apple, Steve Jobs knew how to use meetings to get things done. He instilled the habit of designating a person responsible for following up on every task, and listing this on the meeting notes. That person even had a title—he or she was the “Directly Responsible Individual.”
Let’s break down each of these requirements and see why they’re so vital to your meeting’s success.
1. Make sure your meeting has an agenda.
One of the single biggest ways to increase meeting productivity is to have an agenda.
You might think you know what to talk about, but not everyone coming to your meeting will. The practice of sending out an agenda at least 24 hours ahead of time will begin to prompt meeting participants to actually think about what you want them to think about.
Additionally, you can ask your participants for input, i.e., questions or challenges they’re facing. You might assign them something to prepare in advance. Done right, this can help others to be more active participants, and even—gasp—get excited about your meeting.
When you send out the agenda, make sure someone is responsible for taking notes in the meeting, even if that person is yourself. We’ll come back to this in step three.
2. Assign people to follow up.
Have you ever been part of a working group where each time you get together you discover that 50 percent (or more) of the decisions you came to were never carried out?
I have. The single best way to stop this from happening is to make sure someone is assigned to follow up on every task—yes, that “directly responsible individual.” Although popularized by Jobs at Apple, having a DRI is standard practice at many companies nowadays.
This is because we’re wired to want to produce results, especially when someone is expecting something from us.
But as simple as this is, many who lead meetings don’t always use it effectively. That’s because even after assigning someone to follow up, you still have to do one more thing.
3. Summarize and send out notes.
We’re all human. We miss things. We might write something down and forget it five minutes later.
That’s why at every meeting you run you should make sure to summarize what you’ve learned and decided at the end of the meeting. Hearing that summary is another touchpoint that allows your team the chance to see how to move forward.
Remember how you assigned someone (or maybe even yourself) to take meeting notes when you sent out the agenda? Here’s where that comes in handy: As soon as the meeting is over, you should send out those meeting notes. Preferably within the hour, and no later than by the end of the day.
Try to make the notes as brief as possible, while still communicating the information needed to accomplish your goal. Also include the names of the people assigned to follow up on implementing decisions or completing tasks.
All of this will give your team its best chance at actually accomplishing what you’ve set out to do before you meet again.
Quit holding meetings that are wasting your time—and everyone else’s. Instead, each time you run a meeting, make sure to:
- Send an agenda at least 24 hours before
- Assign someone to follow up on each decision or task
- Summarize the meeting at the end and send out the notes.
If you do, you’ll find your meetings are more effective, more efficient, and more enjoyable, too.
This post originally appeared at inc.com.